Sightline
Four accomplished poets, with four distinct voices, come together to create Sightline.
Read and listen to excerpts.
REVIEWERS’ COMMENTS
The Quartet chapbook series presents just enough work by each poet for the reader to get a solid sense of each writer’s poetry and leave us wanting more.
Elaine Sexton, from the Foreword
What I love about this quartet is the fact that, while each poet has her own particular music and driving fascinations, there is a real interconnectedness among them. There is great tonal range here, but it is obvious that these writers own restless minds and expansive hearts. This collection of poets offers the pleasure of hearing fine soloists and compelling four-part harmony.
Tim Seibles
In SIGHTLINE, four poets open a new horizon before us. In poems illumined with the verdancy that makes song, each poet casts light on the shadowy forms traced by desire in a “wilderness of content finding form.” Lured by the light of lyric vision, these fine poets delve beneath the surface, abetting the inchoate shapes that “rise beside us.” Improvisatory and graceful, these words open our sight onto the dappled world in which “the principal agent became sunlight. / The catalyst: wings.”
Elizabeth Robinson
Four players and four instruments working four overlapping themes, remarkably cohesive considering that each movement has been created by a different composer. The poets are all impressively deft with their craft. Each of them rejects the oversimplified and embraces—with elegance—her complex interpretation of the world. They are all worth reading and re-reading—or, to keep the musical metaphor in mind, listening to, again and again.
Molly Peacock, from the Afterword
MEET THE SIGHTLINE AUTHORS
Elizabeth Austen ELIZABETH AUSTEN is the author of a chapbook, The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010). You can hear her author interviews and poetry commentary at Seattle’s NPR affiliate KUOW.org. She has received grants from the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and 4Culture, and is an alumna of Artsmith, Hedgebrook and The Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center. More information at elizabethausten.org.
Andrea Bates ANDREA BATES’s poems have appeared in The Wanderlust Review, Bloodroot, Main Street Rag, Common Ground Review and other journals. She was the 2010 winner of the North Carolina Poetry Society Thomas H. McDill award. She holds a BA from The University of Massachusetts-Amherst and an MAW from Manhattanville College. Originally from Connecticut, Bates has called Wilmington, NC home since 2001. She teaches writing and literature at community colleges.
Carol Stevens Kner CAROL STEVENS KNER has written articles for the Encyclopedia of World Art, Connaissance des Arts and the New Book of Knowledge, and served for many years as managing editor and staff writer at PRINT Magazine; she left that publication to write poems. Her work has appeared in Western Humanities Review, The Paris Review, North American Review, Connecticut River Review and Southwest Review. She lives in New York City with Andrew Kner, her husband of 49 years.
Sarah Suzor SARAH SUZOR is the author of It was the season, then (EtherDome Chapbooks, 2010). Her poetry, reviews and interviews have appeared in online and print journals including OR, Tarpaulin Sky and Rain Taxi. Her manuscript, The Principle Agent, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in 2011. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is an editor for Highway 101 Press and a visiting lecturer at the Left Bank Writers’ Retreat.
For review copies or to schedule readings, contact editor@toadlilypress.com.
